Audience reviews
6 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
RoxRobstah
If you're a fan of mahjong and superpower sports/game anime, THIS is the real Saki.
This is Saki without the meandering backstories, the boring yuri-bait that never gets anywhere, and the gratuitous fanservice shots of every loli character in the show (mostly). Side-A cuts out most of Saki's original grievances while being even better at what Saki did best: Intense, chaotic, and ridiculous mahjong battles.
In fact, since 95% of this anime doesn't rely on the original Saki, it's completely watchable as a standalone. Just make sure that you know the rules of mahjong, because there isn't as much time to explain everything like in Saki. If anything I said about the original Saki worries you about that series (I wrote a review on it if you want more detail), I recommend giving Side-A a try i…
Read at the sourceDesolatePsyche
First things first. My "reviews" system is explained on a blog entry. Which can be found through my profile.
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✦Story
About Saki side-characters and their adventure through tournaments. I'll be honest, It's been a while since I watched Saki and I cannot really remember most of it let alone side-characters. But nevertheless I found this series fairly enjoyable and cute. It had fair flair of drama and also impact packing mahjong games as always. Not really much else to comment. A fair enough moe show about mahjong.
✦Art & Sound
Not impressive, not bad. Fitting enough, bright and enjoyable. Gotta love the "no pan" style. It's always a mystery whenever they wear anything or not.
Also, Nodoka confuses me as always. She feels so out of place with her giant melons. And her large/loose and…
Read at the sourcenanyatimz
Appreciating side dishes after you have tasted the main cuisine is something I don't find feasible.
That's the case when I started watching Saki - Side A.
It wise to rate the story at the range of 6-7. Doing a side story had the potential to dive into the a whole new dimension and Saki - Side A gave a solid writing to support their cause. Side A chose to do a special adaptation to a group of girls who are directly connected to Haramura Nodoka, a deuteragonist of the Saki series. Much to my surprise is, it is given a 16 episode run which is something I find wasteful.
As the story goes, it was the usual Saki mahjong content. A lot of occult and 1/100th chance of it happening in real games, a lot of extravagant special mahjong effects, the good mind game dialogues. However, the pacing on Si…
Read at the source101swoop101
The girls in Saki: Achiga-hen were childhood friends of Nodoka. It starts off showing their elementary friendship. In the beginning, it was cute, funny.....but then Nodoka left, and just like how the girls were trying their best to catch up to Nodoka, this anime was trying it's absolute hardest to catch up to the greatness of it's parent story.
For the entire first half of the series, everything felt rushed. You don't see any real majong games, and although you know the girls have grown in talent, you don't actually get to see it happen. It was almost like a summery, rather than it's own show. Then once they finally catch up to the prequel, it slows down and becomes a great show. By the last handful of episodes, it really finds it's flow, and you get to see great majong games and great ch…
Read at the sourceAquaHaze
A couple years ago when I started Saki, I didn't think I would enjoy a series about mahjong because I knew next to nothing about mahjong but Saki sure did change my mind. So when Saki: Achiga-hen was announced I just had to watch it, even though it focused on another set of characters. Although it was not as well done and as memorable as the original, it is still an enjoyable series and very entertaining even if you have no knowledge about the game of mahjong.
Compared to the original season, Achiga-hen is much shorter in length so the pacing of this season is extremely fast until the last couple of episodes which is a major weakness. The fast pacing allows the story to progress faster than the original season (as this season just blazed by the prefectures). However, the reason why the or…
Read at the sourceHectotane
I said "Achiga-hen Side-A Episode is too hardcore for my taste." But I went and watched it anyway since it wouldn't hurt.
It's more of the same: CGDCT ("Cute Girls Doing Cute Things)". The dreaded "moe" animu; and said cute thing is mahjong.
The lot of them have weird powers to help them win. And IMMHO, this BULL$#!7 needs to stop. Else, they need to use their powers on something a bit more fruitful than playing games. (I heard "taking over the world" is pretty popular. :P )
And, as with the lot of CGDCT animu, there are TOO many cute girls herein. I stand by my opinion that Koihime Musou is created only because the reality-challenged slobbering otaku-base would rather masturbate to cartoon girls instead of actually learn history. But this takes the same amount of teeth-rotting cake.
N…
Read at the source